In the first part of this article, I addressed the first three questions you should ask before you create a book trailer video:
- Do you know your book, audience, and genre?
- Do you know what other trailers exist for similar books and have you watched them?
- If you are the producer, do you know what tool you will use to create the trailer?
Assuming you’ve thought about these questions, and you’re ready to begin, chances are you did not write the music, or take the pictures, or create the video you want to use in your book trailer video. Yet just because you like a particular song, picture, or video does not mean you can copy and use it without checking the copyright, requesting appropriate permission for use, and failing to cite the source when you publish.
This leads to a fourth question to consider.
4. Where do I get music, pictures, and videos without violating copyright laws?
Through Creative Commons-licensed music, pictures, and videos, you can download items for free, though what you do with those items depends on the license.
Numerous sites, including Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikipedia, have Creative Commons-licensed work.
It’s equally important for the artist to understand what Creative Commons license to select when sharing his or her work. Here is a list of the six basic Creative Commons licenses.
- Attribution (CC BY)—This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the artist’s work, even commercially, as long as they credit the artist for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
- Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)—This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the artist’s work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the artist and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on the artist’s will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
- Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND)—This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to the artist.
- Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)—This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the artist’s work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge the artist and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)—This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)—This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
See the Creative Commons web site to learn more and to find links to some of the many web sites with Creative Commons-licensed work.
